The Godfather Returns

Thirty-five years ago, Mario Puzo's great American tale, The Godfather, was published, and popular culture was indelibly changed. Now, in The Godfather Returns, acclaimed novelist Mark Winegardner continues the story, the years not covered in Puzo's best-selling book or in Francis Ford Coppola's classic films.

The Family Corleone

For Vito Corleone, nothing is more important than his family's future. While his youngest children, Michael, Fredo, and Connie, are in school, unaware of their father's true occupation, and his adopted son Tom Hagen is a college student, he worries most about Sonny, his eldest child. Vito pushes Sonny to be a businessman, but Sonny - 17 years old, impatient, and reckless - wants something else: To follow in his father's footsteps and become a part of the real family business.

The Godfather

More than 40 years ago, Mario Puzo wrote his iconic portrait of the Mafia underworld as told through the fictional first family of American crime, the Corleones. The leader, Vito Corleone, is the Godfather. He is a benevolent despot who stops at nothing to gain and hold power. His command post is a fortress on Long Island from which he presides over a vast underground empire that includes the rackets, gambling, bookmaking, and unions. His influence runs through all levels of American society, from the cop on the beat to the nation's mighty.

The Last Don

The last don is Domenico Clericuzio, a wise and ruthless man who is determined to see his heirs established in legitimate society but whose vision is threatened when secrets from the family's past spark a vicious war between two blood cousins. This is a mesmerizing tale that takes us inside the equally corrupt worlds of the mob, the movie industry and the casinos - where beautiful actresses and ruthless hit men are ruled by lust and violence.

Omerta

Mario Puzo spent the last three years of his life writing Omerta, the concluding installment in his saga about power and morality in America. In The Godfather, he introduced us to the Corleones. In The Last Don, he told the wicked tale of the Clericuzios. In Omerta, Puzo chronicles the affairs of the Apriles, a family on the brink of legitimacy in a world of criminals.

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires

Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. For decades these Five Families ruled New York and built the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra) into an underworld empire. Today, the Mafia is an endangered species, battered and beleaguered by aggressive investigators, incompetent leadership, betrayals, and generational changes that produced violent, unreliable leaders and recruits.

The Family

Mario Puzo first answered the question 'What is a family?' with the creation of the Corleones in his landmark best seller The Godfather. Now, 30 years later, Puzo enriches us all with his ultimate vision of the subject: the story of the greatest crime family in Italian history, the Borgias.

Fools Die

Set within America's golden triangle of corruption and excess—New York, Hollywood, Las Vegas—the novel plunges into the glittering and ruthless worlds of gambling, publishing, and the film industry, where greed, lust, and violence hold sway. As high rollers, hustlers, and scheming manipulators use power, sex, and betrayal to win, the strongest survive—but fools die.

Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mafia Boss Vincent Gigante

Vincent "Chin" Gigante. He started out as a professional boxer - until he found his true calling as a ruthless contract killer. His doting mother's pet name for the boy evolved into his famous alias, "Chin", a nickname that struck fear throughout organized crime as he routinely ordered the murders of mobsters who violated the Mafia code. Vincent Gigante was hand-picked by Vito Genovese to run the Genovese Family when Vito was sent to prison. Chin raked in more than $100 million for the Genovese Family, all while evading federal investigators.

Gotti's Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia

The notorious Gotti family is the stuff of mob legend. The "Dapper Don", John Gotti Sr., and his son John A. "Junior" Gotti ran New York's powerful Gambino crime family and were well known for their flamboyant style and brutal ways, an image perpetuated in popular Mafia mythology. John Alite, a mob hit man, associate, and close friend of the Gottis, has a very different story to tell.

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

From its inception, Atlantic City has always been a town dedicated to the fast buck, and this wide-reachinghistory offers a riveting account of its past 100 year, from the city's heyday as a Prohibition-era mecca of lawlessness to its rebirth as a legitimate casino resort in the modern era.

The Fortunate Pilgrim

Lucia Santa has traveled 3,000 miles of dark ocean, from the mountain farms of Italy to the streets of New York, hoping for a better life. Instead, she finds herself in Hell's Kitchen, in a bad marriage, raising six children on her own. As Lucia struggles to hold her family together, her daughter confronts the adult world of work and romance while her eldest son is drawn into the Mafia. Meanwhile, her youngest son aspires to American pursuits she cannot understand.

The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia

Frank DiMatteo was born into a family of mob hit men. His father and godfather were shooters and bodyguards for infamous Mafia legends, the Gallo brothers. His uncle was a capo in the Genovese crime family and bodyguard to Frank Costello. Needless to say, DiMatteo saw and heard things that a boy shouldn't see or hear. He knew everybody in the neighborhood. And they knew him...and his family. And does he have some wild stories to tell....

Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra

Mafia Prince is the first-person account of one of the most violent eras in Mafia history - "Little" Nicky Scarfo’s reign as boss of the Philly family in the 1980s - written by Scarfo’s underboss and nephew, "Crazy" Phil Leonetti. The youngest-ever underboss at the age of 31, Leonetti was at the crux of the violent downfall of the traditional American Mafia in the 1980s when he infiltrated Atlantic City after gambling was legalized, and later turned state’s evidence against his own.

The Lufthansa Heist: Behind the Six-million Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World

On December 11th, 1978, a daring armed robbery rocked Kennedy Airport, resulting in the largest unrecovered cash haul in world history, totaling six million dollars. The perpetrators were never apprehended and thirteen people connected to the crime were murdered in homicides that, like the crime itself, remain unsolved to this day. The burglary has fascinated the public for years, dominating headlines around the globe due to the story's unending ravel of mysteries that baffled the authorities.

Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance: A Jack Ryan Novel, Book 17

It begins with a family dinner in Princeton, New Jersey. After months at sea, US Navy commander Scott Hagan, captain of the USS James Greer, is on leave when he is attacked by an armed man in a crowded restaurant. Hagan is shot, but he manages to fight off the attacker. Though severely wounded, the gunman reveals he is a Russian whose brother was killed when his submarine was destroyed by Commander Hagan's ship. Hagan demands to know how the would-be assassin knew his exact location, but the man dies before he says more.

The Whistler

Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption. But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined.

Audible Editor Reviews

Why You Should Download This Audiobook: Mark Winegardner's foray into Mario Puzo territory is not without example. Both Robert Ludlum and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left behind characters who've come to life again in the works of others. Facing the daunting task of portraying Michael Corleone and "The Family" with authenticity, Winegardner proves a brilliant one-upsman. He's reverent to Puzo's style while expanding the characters' lives in convincing ways. A must for fans of the original Godfather.

Publisher's Summary

In The Godfather's Revenge, the third and concluding novel in Mario Puzo's landmark saga, Mark Winegardner moves the Corleone family onto the biggest stage of all: the intersection of organized crime and national politics. At its center:

Michael Corleone, boss of America's most powerful crime family, is a haunted man, tormented by demons from his past, even as he pursues the mantle of legitimacy.
Former caporegimeNick Geraci, Michael's onetime top earner, is a hunted man, sought with equal fervor by the Coreleones, who want him dead, and the feds, whose designs are less clear.
U.S. Attorney General Daniel Brendan Shea, brother to James Shea, the galvanizing young president, is an ambitious man, determined to forge a name for himself by toppling the kingpins of organized crime.Carlo Tramonti is a vindictive man, the capo of the New Orleans syndicate, who will exact his revenge for public humiliation, no matter the cost.Tom Hagen is a trapped man, an Irish consigliere in an Italian world, charged with brokering a nearly impossible compromise to spare his organization the wrath of the government, and in doing so, putting himself in mortal peril.

The explosive collision of these five powerful men culminates in a tragedy of historic proportion, an unforgettable capstone to Puzo's great American epic. But the true measure of Mark Winegardner's achievement is in capturing not only the outsized personalities who outmaneuver each other for power and control, but also their interior lives. He reveals the colorful array of wives and daughters, parents and friends who surround them, and the intimate details, textures, contradictory impulses and best intentions of that strangest and most exotic of institutions, family.

After listening to the Godfather Returns, I could not wait to read this last installment. Mark Winegardner did not do a very good job creating this story. I loved the premise but the over book is just weak and left me feeling like I was in someways short changed, however he does manage to tie up all the loose ends.

I did not like this book at all. It is nothing like the previous Godfather books. If you like listening to Mafia figures talk to their wives about family problems or the wives talking to each other you will love this book. No action. I don't think anyone gets killed until the end of the 3rd part. Not my idea of a mafia book especially not in the Godfather series.

Ever wonder what happened to Tom Hagen? Or Johnny Fontaine? This and other gaps in the sprawling Godfather narrative are filled. Winegardner really makes an effort to capture Mario Puzo's tone and pacing, so this book fits in quite nicely with the original. So many characters, it's difficult to keep everybody straight. But it's a fun read, and Scott Brick's performance is first-rate.

Winegardner certainly does the whole series service by drawing out these long loved and venerable villains. The first book post Puzo is such an eye opener because Winegadner does such a loving job unpacking all the possibilities posed by the original. This one keeps that love affair with the Lionhearted going, but Michael stays so cold and the arch of the story reaches for some grand historical allusions, when what we really want is to spend time with the family. There's a lot of pain in this one, and I suppose that's a fitting way to round out what was a hay day that brightened meteoric and then faded under its own tarnishing. Ciao Cosa Nostra.